


Under the Open Sky

by Cortega



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Post-Loss, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-02-28 18:44:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13277625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cortega/pseuds/Cortega
Summary: When she fell from the sky, he broke her fall. She also broke his arm and dislocated his shoulder when she landed on him.





	1. I: Something broken, something blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story only really came to me in the time since my beloved dog died less than a year ago. It’s undeniably a work of grief, but it helped me work through a lot of things happening in that same time. I hope you like it.

Robin finds himself outside her sickroom as dusk falls, leaning his head against the door. His left arm hangs in a sling around his midsection, and his shoulder is wrapped in bandages, broken and wrenched from he caught her. Maribelle and the new guy Libra—who, as it turned out, really was a man after all—had done their best, but his had been the least of the injuries suffered, and so he would need to wait until both had recovered their strength before he would be fully mended. Not that it was any consolation, not when he still saw that flash of green and gold falling to earth, too fast for him to cast with his unbroken arm.

At least he’d managed to save one of them.

“Come in,” her contralto filters through the door, dead and flat, and at last he forces himself to enter.

She’s sitting up, he sees. Considering the wounds she’d taken to her side and chest, it was a good sign, even if her head hung so low. Libra had said they’d had to cut away her armor and tunic for how deeply the arrows had been buried. She’d been fortunate, he’d said, that the arrows hadn’t struck a major artery or organ. Robin had doubted very much that she felt the same. Her modesty is protected by the bloodied linen dressing that swathes her breast and sides, looping up over her left shoulder.

She raises her head almost imperceptibly, peering up through a veil of winter-blue hair, “What do you want?” Phila whispers.

“To see you,” the tomblike silence of the room coupled with her quietude make his voice seem uncomfortably loud, though he barely speaks above a murmur, “I’d thought you almost dead when I caught you.”

“So it should have been,” bitterness creeps into her words, arms circling her knees as she brought them to her chest, “What sort of guard outlives her charge? You should have let me fall and spared yourself the bandages.”

He can’t bring himself to rebuke her, to tell her that her life weighs just as heavily as her Exalt’s. Not when he has the same guilty anchor hanging from his neck. Instead he crosses the room, lowering himself gingerly into the chair by her bedside. He can feel the cold of the wood even through his coat.

“I couldn’t save her,” gods he sounds like shit, but at least the words don’t catch in his throat, like when he had to look Lissa in the eye after his failure, “Her death is my fault as much as yours.”

Phila shakes her head, red eyes dry after so many tears. Her voice is raw as she speaks, “I was the captain of her guard, Wing Commander of her Pegasus knights. Now they are gone and so is she. I was supposed to protect her—”

“And I was supposed to save her,” he tries to keep his voice from rising, to tamp down the self-loathing and anger and keep it from spilling out. The war isn’t won yet, “We both fucked up. Failures both of us.”

She laughs at that—a broken and strangled bark that seems to strain her voice, “The Lady Failure and the Prince’s Dog, what a tale that would be.”

He tries to suppress a smile, but can’t prevent it from breaking through, and she returns a pained smile, a white slash of teeth that reminds him of a slit throat.

“I like to think of myself as a tamed wolf,” he ventures, and when she laughs this time it’s not quite so broken or strangled.

When the laughter leaves her, she’s silent for a long time. He lets it stand, settling back in the chair as best he can without pressuring his wrenched shoulder. He doesn’t want to try his luck. When her shoulders begin to slump and her breathing starts to settle, he leans in, gently easing her back into the pillows despite her whimpered protests.

“Hush now, captain,” he murmurs, “You need your sleep.”

“Shouldn’t bother,” she whispers, clutching his hand, “Should have left me.”

“But I didn’t,” he bites back a harsh retort, squeezes her hand reassuringly, “Mend quickly, Lady Phila. I’ll not leave you to fester in the dark alone.” He holds her hand until it goes limp in his own.

When she wakes next, she is alone, but her fingers are still warm.


	2. II: Chrysalide

The next time he sees her, she’s standing outside his makeshift office, leaning heavily on an oak cane. Her chest and shoulder are still bound in linen dressing, her uniform coat draped over her shoulders, hanging open and unlaced. Robin tries to keep his eyes from straying down to her bared collarbone as he steps out. Subconsciously his hand drifts to his shoulder, newly mended from that morning’s session with Maribelle, and he curses himself for not brushing his hair since the battle.

“They let you back up?”

She nods, the very movement seeming to drain her vitality, “Just for a bit. I need to be back in bed in half an hour.”

He considers her. For a brief moment he entertains the idea of sending her away, as if more time in that room will help her mend. He stands aside, lifting the flap of his tent out of the way to let her enter. She sinks gratefully down on his cot, setting her walking stick on his pillow.

“Have you seen the prince?” she asks.

He shakes his head, shrugging off his coat and draping it over the back of his chair, “He hasn’t left his tent since we returned yesterday. Not since he beat Mustafa half to death,” at her puzzled look, he clarifies, “A Plegian general we ran across as we retreated, one who took Emmeryn’s sacrifice to heart. Chrom…didn’t listen well. Challenged him to single-combat, nearly killed him…Sumia held him back.”

“Sumia?” a pale eyebrow rises, a new question in mind.

“I know, right?” he favors her with a tired smile, “She’s so earnest in her affections. Chrom doesn’t stand a chance.”

“If we all survive this, you mean.”

His smile doesn’t falter as he runs his fingers through his hair, “Don’t be concerned. I’m not a tactician for nothing.”

Her eyes are trained on the ground, fingers twisted in the hem of her coat, “With the prince grieving, and Princess Lissa exhausted as she is, that means—”

“Yeah,” Robin nods, “Until I can get the brick I call my best friend to move, I am in command.” He wonders idly if this could be considered a coup d’état, but her slight giggle at his words at least suggests that the thought hasn’t crossed _her_ mind.

She looks up, meeting those golden eyes, and reaches for her cane, “You’ve more than proven yourself, Tactician. For what little it means, you have my support.”

She tries to rise to her feet, bracing her weight on the oak, but her strength fails her and she sinks back down with a soft grunt of frustration. Robin crosses the tent in a moment, kneeling at her uninjured side.

“It means a great deal to me, Lady Phila. Here, let me help you,” he says, offering his shoulder.

She hesitates for a brief moment, eyes flicking back down to the floor, “Phila.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Call me Phila,” she repeats, draping her undressed arm over his shoulder, “None of this ‘lady’ nonsense.”

He smiles, reaching up to tug her uniform coat more securely over her shoulders as he gingerly stands and bears her weight. He’s stooped a bit, to accommodate her shorter frame, but they manage to hobble toward the door.

“Are you alright?” she asks softly, “You shouldn’t overtax your shoulder, even if it was healed.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not nearly as heavy without all that damned armor. And a might bit softer, too.”

Oh, Naga above, he should _not_ have said that.

She stiffens slightly, cheeks coloring at his words, “I’ll be frank: the last man who called me soft ended up flat on his back with my boot in his gut.” He lets out a nervous chuckle at that, the tension seeming to flow from her into him, but instead she gives him a small smile.

“Given that you broke my fall, quite literally,” she goes on, “I think I can make an exception.”

By the time he walks her back into the medical ward, the color in his cheeks has yet to subside. When he returns to his tent, he buries himself in work and tries to forget those umber-red eyes.


	3. III: Fault-lines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I appreciate all the support, guys!
> 
> Now, I don’t usually do this, but I am putting a WARNING here, for description of a visceral PTSD episode. I had to go to a pretty dark place to write it, and I tried to keep as accurate to the accounts that I read as I could. It was hard to write, and I’m proud of how it turned out, but I also recognize that it might not be for everyone.
> 
> Enjoy! If you like it, write me a comment! I always like feedback, and it helps me improve my craft.

She finds him next as he’s packing. Two days, now, since Emmeryn fell, and already he’s prepared to act. She envies his drive.

“Where are you going?”

Her voice is soft, low, but he stiffens as though struck, and looks over his shoulder.

“You scared the hell out of me.”

“Where are you going?”

“You could Gaius a run for—”

“Sir Robin… _please._ ”

He’s silent, for a long moment. No more deflections come. When he speaks, he turns back to his satchel. His white hair is getting longer, she sees, beginning to dip below the neck of his coat. The perils of being at war too long.

“We know where Gangrel is. A ruined fort near the border with Ferox.”

Her breath catches in her throat, a vision of green and gold falling to earth flashes across her eyes. The drum of her heart lags for just a moment at the implication of his words, his packed satchel.

“You can’t!” the words come spilling out, “You can’t be thinking of—”

Robin whirls around, coat swirling as he holds up both hands, “I’m not, I’m not. We’re not…even I’m not stupid enough to try to take out Gangrel in one strike.”

He can’t, she thinks, he’ll die. Not again.

_Not again._

Green and gold again, reaching out with her broken arm, as if there was anything she could do. An acrid taste fills her mouth, her hands shaking so badly she can barely grip her cane. Her breath comes in short gasps as Prince Chrom’s tortured scream of _Emmeryn!_ rings in her ears.

“Phila! Phi—”

He’s at her side in a moment, hand on her shoulder and worry in his voice, but he melts away with the rest of the world. Her fingers curl in the lapel of his coat and she drags him closer to her. She barely hears him call her name over the pounding of her own heart. The stuttered draughts of her own breathing drown out everything else. All she can see is the flutter of the Exalt’s robes as she fell. The horrid crack of bone wrenches her gut. She chokes on the stench of blood. She closes her eyes, but the vision plays out over and over again. She begs for it to end. She prays: to Naga. To Mila. To every god she can name. Eventually she can only repeat, again and again, _I’m sorry_.

She isn’t sure how long she stays like that, caught in an unending loop of apology. At some point, she feels something cool and metallic pressed into her hand. Her head is pillowed on something warm and firm. Slowly, bit by bit, she comes back to herself. Those awful sounds and smells slowly fade away. Her surroundings filter back into her consciousness: the scent of cooking food and brewing tea, the hazy beige of the tent ceiling…

And his voice, she realizes. He's reading aloud from a book on battlefield tactics. His meter is steady, but his voice is strained from use, and she wonders how long he must have been going like this. She runs her thumb across warm metal, hands clasped to her chest, and she looks down to see one of her war medals in her hands. She squeezes it, reassured by the unyielding strength of the medallion, as steadfast as his voice, still reading.

A third realization comes to her as she's aware of the tension in his thigh under her head. Her eyes burn when she closes them, and a faint wetness still stains her cheeks. She shifts, and his cadence breaks, his eyes flicking down to her before he sighs in relief.

“Thank the gods,” he murmurs, setting the book down, “I’d no idea what was going on, but I didn't…well, I couldn't just leave you.”

There's a tremble in his hand when he rakes it through his hair, and she reaches up to take it before he can make another run. She can feel the tremor still, small as it may be. He looks at her hand, like a thing of mystery, before those golden eyes turn downward to find hers, gazing up at him unwavering.

She holds her grip until she can find her voice again. When she does, she's raw and weak, but she manages two words.

“Thank you.”


	4. IV: Perceived

** IV: Perceived **

The evening after, she realizes that she hasn’t been alone all day. She’d been transferred to the tent adjacent to Sumia and Cordelia’s the night before—ostensibly so that the three remaining Pegasus knights may coordinate more closely. Seeing her juniors flourishing amongst the Shepherds so gives her comfort. Even should she fall in battle, they won’t be lost.

Sumia has been flitting in and out of her tent all morning. She’s less spirited than before the last battle, before Chrom had sequestered himself away, but she seems emboldened. Robin had spoken to her, it seems. She’s still not been able to don her armor, nor lace her coat, but Maribelle had assured her that she should need only one or two more healing sessions to restore her to battle-ready conditions.

Frederick knocks at the post outside her tent, asking to discuss the troop movements. His report is perfunctory, like all his work, and he keeps his gaze stolidly at eye-level. She has to tamp down the urge to laugh, recalling how far over his head one of the castle maid’s flirtations had flown. Sometimes she wondered if he kept all those pebbles he collected off the path in his skull. When he steps outside, Princess Lissa flutters right past him to enter. Phila stands, tries to apologize, but the girl will have none of it.

“You did everything you could,” she says, sinking to her knees beside the older woman. Her eyes are still red, likely have been for days, but there’s a steel to her that wasn’t there before, “You, Chrom, Robin…you all did everything that was possible. You couldn’t have expected that, no one could have.”

“Princess Lissa, I don’t—”

“But now…I’m not sure,” Lissa rubs at her eyes with her wrist, annoyed by an apparent itch, “Chrom’s gone. He's sitting in his tent. He eats, he walks, but he's just…not there.”

“My lady…” Phila trails off. What can she say? “We’re here. Me and Robin and Frederick and all the others. We’ll hold this army together as long as it takes.”

Lissa shakes her head, “Time is running short. Half of Gangrel’s men deserted him. But the longer we tarry, the more our inaction will look like impotence,” her brow furrows in a look of determination, “Everyone's waiting. I don't know how long.”

The princess sweeps out of the tent in a swirl of skirts. Not two minutes later Cordelia entered, her spear held in two hands and a question on her lips, but by this point Phila understood. When Cordelia leaves, her spear rebalanced and not sighing quite so much, she stands and follows her out, brushing past a startled Sumia and her handful of flowers.

When she reaches Robin’s tent she has to take a minute to compose herself, brush her hair form her eyes, adjust her uniform coat where it lies draped across her shoulders— _why_ is she taking such care? She sighs, takes a breath, and steps into the inner sanctum.

“You told them?”

He’s hunched over a pile of papers and tomes, quill scratching across the page. At her question, he looks up, golden eyes owlishly wide, “Come again?”

“The Princess, Frederick, Cordelia, Sumia,” she drags her fingers through her hair, not even caring how much skin it shows off, “I haven’t been alone all day! Did you tell them?”

“Of course not!” his tone was almost offended, “I wouldn’t…I’d never,” he shakes his head, “Never. Phila, I would never.”

She lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding, “Then…what’s going on? I’ve had people in and out of my tent all morning, barely a moment alone.”

Robin avoids her gaze, taking a sudden and immense interest in the wood grain of his table, “Well, you _are_ Ylisse’s Wing Commander—”

“Wing Commander of a force that barely exists anymore,” she rebuts, settling herself on his cot and keeping her eyes trained on him, “By all rights, I should have been outmoded six days ago.”

“We still have two Pegasus knights in training,” he evades, “Cordelia’s got a ways to go, and gods know Sumia needs—”

“ _Robin,_ ” she cuts through his excuses a second time, “The truth. Please.”

He sighs, laying his quill down and leaning back in his chair. There’s silence for a long moment before he speaks, “I didn’t tell anyone. I…I asked Sumia to keep an eye on you, in case something happened. The others were easier. I told Frederick to keep you apprised of the situation. Lissa needed to know we weren't falling apart, Cordelia needed guidance…” He trails off, nail scratching at his table before he looks up at her and gives her a wry grin, “I'm not a tactician for nothing, you know.”

She sighs, breath coming in short, unstable puffs, “So you duped each of them into thinking they needed to come to me for their problems?” she couldn’t hold down a little laugh, “You really are devious.”

A light chuckle bubbles up from him, a contented smile curling his lips, “You make me sound like some kind of villain. I suppose I could still go dark sometime.”

She’s quiet for a long moment, wrapping her arms around her middle as she tries not to test her newly-mended ribs, “It…terrified me. The thought of them finding out.”

“Not me?”

She gives him a sidelong glance before lacing her fingers on her knee. She’s quiet for a long moment, “You're different.”

He flashes a cocky grin, “Don't have to tell me twice.”

She can’t help but shake her head, a weary smile curling her lips, “You ass. We were having a moment.”

“Apologies, my lady,” he bows his head, “I'll do my best to find us another when the war is over.”

“I’ve _had it,_ Robin!” Phila startles at the sound of one of her juniors barging into the tent.

“S-Sumia?!” he stutters to a halt, “What’s got into you?”

“I can’t wait like this any longer! Oh, sorry Captain,” but the younger knight sallies on, “I’m going right on in there, and I’m not leaving until he moves!”

And like that, she’s gone.

There’s a long moment where they remain frozen, blinking owlishly at the fluttering canvas where Sumia had left before Robin bolts from his chair for one of his drawers, nearly tripping over his coat in his haste.

“Should we go after her?!” Phila asks, still somewhat alarmed.

“Are you kidding me? I’m not missing this for the world. Just need to grab something for the show, come on!” Robin hurries past her, one arm laden with snacks while the other hooks her elbow and jerks her to her feet as they follow, shouting down the row, “Lissa, it’s happening! You won’t wanna miss this!”


	5. V: Screw your courage to the sticking place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, all. Still me. Still alive. This one’s pretty short, but the next one isn’t. It’s mostly about *feelings*.

** V: Screw your courage to the sticking place **

 

“You know, I really do think that setting the mattress on fire might have been going too far.”

Robin’s remark filters through the canvas of her tent as she inspects herself in the mirror: hair braided and bound up in her usual crown-like style, uniform coat laced tight for the first time in half a week, breastplate and spaulders secured…she feels good. Battle-ready. Phila toys idly with a gold hairpin, the body of the pin carved into the shape of a feather, a gift from Lady Emmeryn when she’d come of age. She lifts her arms, pushing through the lingering stiffness from her wounds to slide the pin into place.

“She didn’t really mean it, though,” Phila points out, tugging on her riding boots, “That candle should _not_ have been placed there.”

 She hears his low laugh as she gets to lacing her boots, but she’s nearly done before he speaks again, “Today’s the day. The day we make that madman pay for every atrocity he’s committed,” there’s something dark in his voice, an anger uncharacteristic of his usual restraint, “You ready?”

“Of course, _Grandmaster_.”

He chuckles, humor seeming to be revitalized, “Stop that. I swear to Naga I’m going to make Chrom take that damned title back.”

She pauses, fingers lingering on the laces, plucking idly as she considers her words, “She meant to give you the title. When the war was over.”

“Who meant—oh.”

It’s a small sound, but one that carries volumes. He falls silent, and for a moment she think she may have said too much, “Robin?”

“I’m here, I just…”

He’s fumbling for words. He never does that with anyone else. She wonders what it means, “It’s okay, you don’t have to say anything.”

“No, it’s just…thank you,” she can picture that little rueful smile of his, just by his voice, “I’m glad you told me.”

She lingers there for a long moment, afraid he may only be reassuring her, “She had faith in you, Robin. She told me, the night after she decided to return to Ylisstol, that you and Prince Chrom would be the arbiters of change on this continent.”

Another long pause, and this time his voice is stronger, and she can hear the rustle of his coat as he straightens his spine, “Well, then…I’ve got a lot of work to live up to that.”

She smiles, turning and stepping out of the tent to see that he has indeed straightened up, newly resolved, “You won’t be alone. You’ll have the Prince and Princess, and Lady Sumia…”

“And you,” he says, those golden eyes turning fully upon her, “We’re all going to need your help to rebuild Ylisse.”

She nods in assent, sparing a thought for her fallen sisters before she meets his gaze, “And me.”


End file.
